TheDataScientist

Learning path

Data Engineer

Pipelines, modelling and orchestration — starting on your laptop

BEGINNERDifficulty: BEGINNER

5 steps · ~14 weeks

  1. 1

    Choose your engine on evidence

    Workload shape beats benchmark scores.

    articleDuckDB vs pandas vs Polars: When Each One Wins

  2. 2

    See the numbers behind that advice

    Six workloads, three engines, memory included.

    researchDuckDB vs pandas vs Polars on 50 Million Rows

  3. 3

    Build the whole stack locally

    Ingestion, dbt, testing, orchestration.

    projectLaptop Data Platform

  4. 4

    Do it as a guided course

    Including deliberately breaking an incremental model.

    courseModern Data Engineering on Your Laptop

  5. 5

    Move to a cloud platform

    Fabric as the worked example.

    projectMicrosoft Fabric Analytics Platform